Cows Gone WildAn Animal Rights Article from All-Creatures.org

FROM

Yvonne eluded capture for three months,
which to me indicates either an abundance of hiding places in the Bavarian
countryside or a searching strategy with more holes than (dare I say it?)
Swiss cheese. She even had her own “wanted” poster.

She became, quite frankly, a badass bovine.
You gotta cheer for that! Bulls (usually under the duress of a rodeo or
bullfight) occasionally get some respect, but cows? Hardly ever.

This is an epilogue to a previous article I wrote about slaughterhouse
escapees (Great Escapes), who always
seem to capture the world’s attention in a way that other, more generic
farmed animals do not.

Recently added to the list of famously frisky farm fugitives is a
6-year-old cow named Yvonne, who escaped from a German farm last May just
before she was to be shipped off for slaughter.

Yvonne eluded capture for three months, which to me indicates either an
abundance of hiding places in the Bavarian countryside or a searching
strategy with more holes than (dare I say it?) Swiss cheese. She even had
her own “wanted” poster.

Electric fences, road traffic, helicopters, infrared cameras, hunters
(who for awhile were given permission to shoot her on sight), police
officers and other searchers were no match for Yvonne. She even resisted the
lure of the masculine musk of Ernst, who was called “the George Clooney of
bulls.” (But given Clooney’s famous aversion to commitment, maybe Yvonne
knew instinctively that it wouldn’t work out.)

Even when she was finally found near a group of cows on another farm,
Yvonne didn’t surrender quietly; it took several men with tranquilizer
darts, ropes and a truck to move her to the Gut Aiderbichi sanctuary that
had purchased her safety, as well as that of her 2-year-old son, Friesi. She
now has lifelong comfort – and her own webcam.

But my favorite part of this story isn’t just that Yvonne was ultimately
saved from slaughter – it’s the characterization of her during three months
on the run.

Modern action heroes have nothing on Yvonne. She jumped in front of a
police car, and then eluded the officers. She dodged a helicopter with
heat-sensing cameras. German authorities declared her a security risk.

NPR called her “an incandescent symbol of freedom and animal dignity.” A
hunter who came face-to-face with Yvonne told sanctuary owner Michael
Aufhauser that “he looked into her eyes and she looked back like a wild
animal, not a dairy cow.” The Der Spiegel newspaper reported that the same
stalker “reported that she now looks more like a buffalo than a cow, and has
evidently turned into a wild animal in her months on the run.” (She escaped
him unharmed.) Yvonne was called “an increasingly shaggy wild beast.”

She became, quite frankly, a badass bovine. You gotta cheer for that!
Bulls (usually under the duress of a rodeo or bullfight) occasionally get
some respect, but cows? Hardly ever.

[I should note, however, that “Far Side” artist Gary Larson did a great
service to cattle when he depicted them in many of his cartoons. One of my
favorites shows several cows in a field standing up and talking; when a car
approaches, they drop to all fours and pretend to eat grass. When the car
passes, they resume standing and talking. Another shows a farmer walking
into a dark barn where two cows are studying a diagram of a man divided into
“shoulder chops” and “spare ribs,” with the head delightfully designated as
“throw away.”]

Yvonne helped demand more respect for cows. She wasn’t going to let her
life get thrown away. Whatever consciousness she has of her existence, she
made deliberate choices that put her pursuers to shame.

What should shame the rest of us is any acceptance of animals as
disposable commodities. Yvonne’s former owners wanted to convert her from
being a milk machine into being a meat machine, which is the ultimate fate
of most dairy cows. The vast majority of these animals don’t get freedom or
Facebook fame, they just get used and killed by the millions.

So even though Yvonne lost the battle for total independence, she won a
moral victory and recruited an army of supporters. May she not be the last
of the cows gone wild.

Fair Use Notice: This document, and others on our web site, may contain copyrighted
material whose use has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owners.
We believe that this not-for-profit, educational use on the Web constitutes a fair use
of the copyrighted material (as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law).
If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond fair use,
you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.